I decided to do a test run to make sure WWE could sustain a brand split. I took over as Vince for a day, set up a brand split, and had Bret leave WCW so I could skip a year ahead and make sure the split was something the AI could handle.

The answer was yes, so I believe I'll be going ahead with the plan to make that part of the prediction contest. I also found some of the things that happened over that year fascinating, so I'll share some of it with you:

-Perhaps to support the split, WWE greatly increased the size of their roster over the year, going from 57 to 84. Among those 84? Probably 7 or 8 WCW guys, including Goldust, Sean O'Haire and DDP! It wasn't all one-sided though, because AI WCW stole William Regal, Kane, Trish Stratus, and...someone whose identity I don't want to give away, in case I can steal them for real!

-WWE's popularity in the US declined. Not drastically, but enough to be noticeable. They remained at National throughout the year. WCW's popularity increased; they not only became more popular than WWE, but made it to International. Despite them being International and WWE National, WWE is still somehow ranked #1.

-I have women's wrestling in WCW set as Integrated (not so I can do intergender matches, but just so the women can have regular pushes instead of 'Women's Division'.) Because of that, WCW's roster looks wonky. Both Nitro and WWR are treated the same, so the Renaissance brand includes the likes of Goldberg, Danielson, and Lance Storm.

-Rey Mysterio remained champion throughout the year, but he didn't defend the title on every PPV. He continued to have amazing matches every single time though; his worst title defense from this period was against Goldberg, and that was 'only' a 91. Almost every other one was either a 98 or 99. For some reason, the AI has kept the title on him while mainly using him in the Filthy Animals team with Kidman, and in a sim that ended in May 04, he hadn't defended the title since January. (He and Kidman did have some amazing matches with Made in Italy though!)

-The women's title was all but forgotten. Toyota defended it exactly once in an entire year. She did have an awesome TV match teaming up with Eddie against Goldberg and The Unnatural though!

-Austin won wrestler of the year. He had two perfect 100 matches; a Nitro match against Mortis which won MOTY, and a win over Sean O'Haire in the finals of the Stu Hart Classic.

-With Bret out of the picture, Dixie Carter became the owner of WCW. Making a much better decision than she ever did in real life, she hired Paul Heyman as booker.

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Originally Posted by JMike

57 is a good amount, I thought it would be in the 30s or 40s because WCW has half the roster they had irl at this point. I'd say, with the reception of the Fatu surprise, maybe sign the man to a short term deal. What to do with him? Idk, my best idea would be having him believe the Yung Dragons conspiracy. What do I know? Thankfully I'm not bookerman here. I'm not a good bookerman.

57 seemed like a good amount to me. It's got nothing on WCW though; we're in the 90s!

(The numbers would probably be closer if I just had a women's division instead of an entire brand.)

I'd never even considered having another wrestler or wrestlers being sympathetic to the Jung Dragons' "objections." That idea has some potential, with or without Fatu.

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Originally Posted by Kijar

I almost always overload my roster and have to do a brand split. I find it works best with roughly 5 main eventers on each brand, maybe one more each, if one was to be stingy about face/heel divide equality
But yeah, they are sitting pretty well for a brand split at 57 with 20 in the uppercard. Better than the AI usually do with one

I could easily justify a genuine split with WCW as well, but I'm liking the setup with a 2 hour Nitro and 1 hour just for the women, and I don't really want to add any more. I should probably just scale back and let some people walk when their contracts are coming due.

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Originally Posted by James The Animator

Well, seeing as I'm doing so well in the prediction contest, I'm beginning to get excited about participating in the next Ultimate Fan Series! I know it's a bit soon to start saying that, as it just ended, but that's going to be a lot of fun if I can join in!

Consider this a practice session for that! Next month's Great American Bash will be the end of this contest, with doing the WWE draft and booking Summerslam available as prizes. Then the UFS contest starts in July and runs all the way through Starrcade.

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Originally Posted by kinnikuniverse

To be honest, that event was pretty easy to predict, except for the mayhem match.

Yeah, there were lots of perfect 8/8s on the non-Mayhem match part of the show. One of those matches could very easily have gone the other way though.

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Also, cool that you reduced Joe's contract for one year only. The joe we know and love didn't exist till 2004, so you're right in the money on that. Maybe you can do the Akuma character on joe, in that he's a merciless warrior looking for the strongest opponents to face for a fight to the death ( well, not exactly death, but u know what I mean.)

That's a good comparison.

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Look, I know I'm beating on a dead horse, and I probably should stop annoying you with it, but I really want dragon gate to be founded! They're one of my favorite promotions back then, and I recently watched their recent shows and got hooked!

It'll happen; I just need to make time to get around to it.

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Wait, can't new japan become a child company to you? Because do child companies work exactly what I described in the previous post? Or something similar?

They could, yeah. NJPW was still hanging around in my yearlong sim; still in debt, but the debt hadn't gone up hardly at all. They yo-yoed back to National and then back down to Cult again, but they were still hanging in there. With that in mind, I might leave them alone for the time being and hope they can pull through on their own.